Maggie Helwig - Girls Fall Down

‘Go home, Alex,’ she said quietly. They were nearing the intersection with Broadview now. ‘I don’t need you.’

‘No kidding,’ said Alex sourly.

‘God, you like that idea, don’t you? Poor Alex, out in the cold, all fragile and powerless. As if you… as if it never hurt, knowing you were always there – wanting things I couldn’t give you or, or anyone…’ She turned her head sharply, scanning the road for a break in the traffic. ‘As if you never hurt me. Jesus.’

‘It’s not the same at all. ‘

‘Okay, then.’ She turned to him. Her face was cold and very still. ‘I had an abortion in Vancouver. Will that do?’

He wasn’t immediately aware of any emotion. The first thing he thought was that he needed to sit down, and his legs folded up onto someone’s front lawn. He saw the outline of Susie standing in front of him in the darkness, a faint red wash from the Christmas lights of the house beside them, her arms crossed.

‘Good enough, Alex? Happy now? You think maybe you did enough harm after all?’

‘Oh God. Stop. I don’t… I don’t… ’

‘What I really hate,’ she went on, her voice tight and controlled, ‘is that I can’t tell you for sure if it was yours. Because I don’t know. You have no idea how much I hate saying that, but I don’t know.’ He pressed his fingers against his temples. ‘Not that there are a million candidates. It was either you or Chris. I just can’t be sure who.’

‘It’s not…’ he said, and the words came out too high-pitched, ‘… surely it’s not very likely it was me. I mean, it was only… ’

‘No. But it’s not very likely it was Chris either. One way or another, something unlikely happened, all right? It’s true I was sleeping with Chris on and off until I actually left town, which in retrospect seems pretty sick, but on the other hand,’ she took a breath, ‘when I slept with Chris, we used birth control.’

He dug his hands into his hair. ‘Oh Jesus.’

‘Yeah, well.’ ‘I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. I thought… I assumed you would have said something if… oh, hell. I guess it doesn’t help to say I wouldn’t do the same thing now.’

She sat down on the grass beside him, and he put his head on his knees.

‘I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Yes, you should’ve.’

‘I don’t blame you. Not really. I’m sorry I brought it up this way.’

‘No. I had to know.’

‘Chris doesn’t know. I don’t plan to tell him.’

A car drove by, lights passing over them. His eyes were throbbing. ‘Suppose,’ he said hesitantly, ‘suppose you had known… say you knew for sure it was Chris’s… would you have… ’

‘Please. Don’t. It’s not worth going that way. I was by myself in Vancouver, and honest to God, neither one of you was looking like fantastic father material.’ She swallowed once, and he thought she was trying not to cry. ‘I nearly did tell you. I had my hand on the phone once. But how the hell can you say to somebody, I’m pregnant and it could be yours, but then again maybe not?’

‘I don’t know. I guess most people just lie.’

‘Anyway,’ he saw dimly that she was lifting her hand and wiping her eyes, ‘that wasn’t the only thing. I just… Alex, my twin brother is schizophrenic.’

He bit his lip. ‘Yeah. And I have diabetes.’

‘Oh God, you don’t get it,’ she said, her voice choked. ‘Do you think I meant – ’

‘I don’t know what I think. I don’t think anything.’

‘It wasn’t like that, I wasn’t thinking about the, the child having it. I was thinking about me. I was thinking,’ and now she really was crying, he heard the small gasping sounds between her words, ‘I would lose my mind, I would go crazy like Derek, and I would have this baby, this poor little baby, and it would have to love me, it wouldn’t have a choice because babies don’t, and it would have to watch me lose my mind. Probably just when it was old enough to really – to have its life totally destroyed, and I could see it so clearly, I could see how I would fall apart, little by little, and I would, I would do awful things, I would hurt it, hurt it in all kinds of horrible ways, and it was so easy to picture, so easy… ’

‘But why… for God’s sake, why would you… ’

‘I was sitting in, in this chair, in this house in Vancouver, and there was this picture in my mind of putting a baby’s hand on the burner of the stove, and I thought, I will believe that I’m helping it. I will do this and I will think that I’m helping it. And I couldn’t, it wouldn’t go away, and I couldn’t get up from the damn chair, hours, a whole day, I don’t know how long. I would believe it was kindness. ’ Her voice broke up completely, and she had to breathe fast and shallow for a minute before she could speak again. ‘Alex, it shouldn’t have been just Derek,’ she said, her voice faint and strained. ‘It should have been me. You didn’t grow up with us, you don’t understand, you think these things are far away, but they’re not far away, they’re close, God they’re close, there’s nothing there I don’t already own. It’s right here inside me, all of Derek’s sickness, it’s in me too, and maybe it won’t ever get me, maybe I’ll always escape, but it’s still there, it’s still mine.’

Alex sat with his head on his knees, trying pointlessly, stupidly, to remember if there had been a clinic in Vancouver back then or if she would have gone to a hospital. He hoped there had been a clinic, but he couldn’t remember. He hadn’t kept track of those details. He’d only taken pictures.

He imagined a past where he might have said different things. Where he might have said, I will love you, I will look after you, whoever you become and whatever you do. Where he might have said, Stay here. Stay with me. We are all of us mortally sick. Stay here . But it wouldn’t have been real. He wouldn’t have understood what he was saying.

‘I was a stupid scared kid, but I think I did love you sometimes,’ said Susie. ‘So fuck off out of my life, okay?’ She stood up, wiping her nose, and crossed the street, without looking back at Alex as he followed her.

They walked in silence down Pottery Road, into the darkness. The night-vision problem was worse. He could see very little. He remembered the day that he caught her as she fell from the railing, and the sudden feeling that was like a revelation. You are mine. He thought that, after all, it was nearly true, and that it was far more painful and complicated than the person he was could ever have dreamed.

Along the narrow shoulder of the highway, the lighting was unpredictable and sporadic, and the route seemed too precarious, the cars curving directly towards him, each missed step a waiting disaster. They crossed the Don River and he felt gravel under his feet along the curve of the road towards Bayview. An ambulance raced past them in the other direction, its light pulsating.

At the foot of the hill, she could not any longer pretend to be unaware that he was behind her. ‘I never invited you to come,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘What makes you think this is any of your business?’

He had nothing to say to that, so he simply shrugged. Susie turned away and began to climb, towards her brother, her magnetic north. He waited a few moments, leaving a distance between them, before he started up the slope himself.

But when they reached the top, above the streetlights, he was nearly blind. The ambient light that he remembered was useless to him now, his eyes unable to register it. He took an uncertain step forward, unbalanced, and reached out for something to put his hand against, but there was nothing there. He walked another unsteady pace and stopped.